Elon Musk Reminds Us That GM Once Crushed All Its Electric Cars

In a series of tweets on Friday, Elon Musk revealed why he got into the electric car game — and threw some shade at General Motors.

“Few people know that we started Tesla when GM forcibly recalled all electric cars from customers in 2003 & then crushed them in a junkyard,” he tweeted.

He’s right, when it comes to GM. Back in the ‘90s, GM was slated to be the leading manufacturer in electric cars, debuting the EV1 in 1996.

The junkyard remains of GM's EV1s.

But when production ended in 2000, the manufacturing giant abruptly abandoned the project and began reclaiming all the EV1s that had made it onto the road. The cars went straight to the junk yard, much to the dismay of the 800 or so EV1 fans who had signed up to lease the innovative vehicle.

Since big car companies were killing their EV programs, the only chance was to create an EV company, even tho it was almost certain to fail

Musk replied to a question from one of his followers that Tesla — perhaps partly because of its success — has “convinced most of the auto industry to start EV programs.” Notably, he says that Tesla gave other companies its patents.

Long way to go, but we've convinced most of the auto industry to start EV programs & gave them all our patents to help, so that's something

If you want to learn more about Musk’s perspective on the auto industry’s approach to electric cars, he recommends the documentary Who Killed the Electric Car? The film blames the stagnation of the electric car’s ubiquity on GM and other major auto manufacturers that have been quelled by Big Oil and government interests.